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A few hours after Margaret Thatcher’s death on Monday, the snarling deadbeats of the British underclass were gleefully rampaging through the streets of Brixton in South London, scaling the marquee of the local fleapit and hanging a banner announcing, “THE BITCH IS DEAD.” Amazingly, they managed to spell all four words correctly. By Friday, “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” from The Wizard of Oz, was the No. 1 download at Amazon U.K... --snip-- A generation on, the Thatcher era seems more and more like a magnificent but temporary interlude in a great nation’s bizarre, remorseless self-dissolution. She was right...

The Wizard of Oz song at the centre of an anti-Margaret Thatcher campaign will not be played in full on the Official Chart Show. Instead a five second clip of the 51-second song will be aired as part of a Newsbeat report, Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper has said. Sales of Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead have soared since the former Prime Minister's death on Monday, aged 87. Mr Cooper called the decision "a difficult compromise". The song is set to take the number three spot in Sunday's countdown, according to the Official Charts Company.

This is beyond petty. It is ignorant. A hold has been placed on a resolution honoring Margaret Thatcher in the Senate which, as Katherine Rosario explains, is an insult: "A Senate resolution to honor Lady Thatcher was supposed to pass last night. However, per well placed sources on the Hill, Democrats have a hold on the resolution. To refuse to honor a woman of such great historical and political significance, who was deeply loyal to the United States, is petty and shameful. One truly has to wonder, what is it about Lady Thatcher that gives them pause? Her unfaltering commitment...

There were a lot of pictures of Ronald Reagan in the newspapers this week, and it felt a little weird. It’s been almost a quarter of a century since the president left the White House and close to a decade since he died, and I have grown less accustomed to his face. It was a blast from the past. There again was the Hollywood smile, the Windsor knot, the pompadour and, in every image, his trusty comrade in ideological arms from across the ocean, Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister who died on Monday aged 87. On this side...

This is Romany Blythe, the drama teacher from Brighton who encouraged everyone to piss on Margaret Thatcher’s grave.........This is, or was, Erika. She was a young student who was a real revolutionary. She and thousands of other brave Hungarians came out onto the streets of Budapest in 1956

No one much cared what Nigel Farage had to say about Margaret Thatcher. The verdicts of everyone from Nick Clegg to Gerry Adams were being relayed, but broadcasters were not keen on the views of the chap with the funny hat and the comic expressions. Ukip is still seen in Westminster as a freakish single-issue party with the intellectual clout of a mayfly and about the same life expectancy. It might flutter during the Government’s mid-term blues, but it is expected to perish in the next election as surely as the BNP did in the last one. This was certainly...

TV and film star Joan Collins is part of a list of celebrities and noteworthy figures due to attend Lady Thatcher's funeral next week, The Commentator has learned. The list released moments ago by Downing Street, includes The First Ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Falklands veterans, David Frost and Sir Trevor McDonald. Collins was a long-standing fan and supported of Lady Thatcher and recently commented that she subconsciously "had Thatcher at the back of my mind" when playing her Dynasty character Alexis Carrington. In an interview with the Daily Mail, Collins said in 2011, "‘I feel very pessimistic...

"Divisive." That's a word that appeared, often prominently, in many news stories reporting the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. One senses the writers' disapproval. You're not likely to find "divisive" in stories reporting the deaths of liberal leaders, although every electoral politician divides voters. "Divisive" here refers to something specific. It was Margaret Thatcher's special genius that she systematically rejected the conventional wisdom, almost always well-intentioned, of the political establishment. Instead, she insisted on hard, uncomfortable truths. British Conservatives like Harold Macmillan accepted the tyranny of trade unionism because they had guilty memories of the slaughter of...

The tributes to Margaret Thatcher in this country upon her passing were nice. But what America really needs is its own Margaret Thatcher. In Republican circles there’s great nostalgia for Ronald Reagan. Thatcher is seen as sort of Reagan’s sidekick, an ally in promoting democratic capitalism and taking a firm stance against Soviet expansionism. Not to diminish Reagan, who transformed American politics in ways that reverberate today, Thatcher actually had the tougher task. Reagan had to restore the health of the American economy, which was plagued by high inflation and sluggish growth. But he had some fiscal headroom within which...

Former Sex Pistol John Lydon says those now celebrating Margaret Thatcher’s death are “loathsome”. John, famously known as Johnny Rotten when he was the singer in Punk icons The Sex Pistols back in the 1970s as Maggie was rising to power, added: “I’m not going to dance on her grave.” He also said: “I was her enemy in her life, but I will not be her enemy in her death.” …

Whitehall officials proposed the presence of Argentine officials at a meeting of the committee which is organising the funeral, code-named Operation True Blue. The Telegraph understands that Lady Thatcher’s children, Sir Mark and Carol, believe that such protocol would be “inappropriate”. Sir Mark, who returned to Britain from Barbados on Tuesday, will attend a meeting of the Operation True Blue committee tomorrow to represent his mother’s interests. The committee, which is meeting on a daily basis, is planning to make the liberation of the Falkland Islands a central part of the ceremonial funeral on Wednesday.

She was respected more abroad than at home It is still terribly hard for those who opposed her to admit it, but Margaret Thatcher was right about most things. She was right that Britain’s trade unions had become much too powerful. She was right that nationalised industries had to be privatised. She was right that inflation has monetary causes. She was also mostly right about foreign policy. She was right to drive the forces of Argentina’s junta out of the Falklands and she was right to exhort a “wobbly” George H.W. Bush to mete out the same treatment to Saddam...

Romany Blythe, 45, created a group on Facebook called The Witch is Dead followed by more than 5,000 people, calling for “demonstrations of disapproval” across the country. A number of places on the list were locations of riots and demonstrations that took place across the country on Monday, including Bristol city centre and George Square in Glasgow. Blythe is a drama teacher with a workshop company that visits secondary schools. She specialises in “facilitating workshops for young, excluded and potentially criminalised individuals and uses drama techniques she has developed to explore resolution of conflict and oppression,” according to the company's...

There was a lot in common between former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her British contemporary Margaret Thatcher as the two had struck up a close rapport and both felt the loneliness of high office. Besides being the first women to take charge of a largely male-dominated political world of their respective countries, the two women had an almost identical steely resolve on difficult issues. They may not have always agreed with each other and are believed to have had a number of fiery exchanges, but there was a grudging respect on both sides. "But in spite of everything...

Baroness Thatcher will be given a war leader's funeral, with personnel from regiments who fought to free the Falkland Islands carrying her body into St Paul's Cathedral. More than 700 men and women from the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force will take part next Wednesday, Downing Street has revealed. The Welsh Guards, the regiment who suffered the heaviest losses in the war, will form a guard of honour as her body is taken into the cathedral for the service at 11am. Tensions between Britain and Argentina remain over the Falklands, and President Cristina Kirchner will not be...

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher . She was 87. Despite many accomplishments during her 11 years in office, she was a divisive figure, and there is still much bitterness surrounding the woman who was dubbed the Iron Lady. Thatcher's long journey to becoming one of Britain's most influential leaders began in humble surroundings. She was born on Oct. 13, 1925, in the small English town of Grantham. Her mother was a dressmaker, her father a grocer and a local politician. Thatcher often credited her father with introducing her to politics. She said he instilled in her the importance of...

It will be from heaven that Margaret Thatcher, the greatest friend the United States ever had, will observe the now-inescapable disintegration of the dismal European tyranny-by-clerk whose failure she foresaw even as it brought her down. Margaret was unique: a fierce champion of people against government, taxpayers against bureaucrats, workers against unions, Us against Them, free markets against state control, privatization against nationalization, liberty against socialism, democracy against Communism, prosperity against national bankruptcy, law against international terrorism, independence against global governance; a visionary among pygmies; a doer among dreamers; a statesman among politicians; a destroyer of tyrannies from arrogant Argentina...

APRIL 9, 2013 Margaret Thatcher 1926–2013 We shall not see her like again. By Conrad Black The news of the death of Margaret Thatcher is not, at her age and in the condition that she has been in for some years, a great surprise or entirely sad. But in contemplation of the great career she had and the immense service she rendered the United Kingdom and the Western world, it is overwhelmingly sad. In general, Britain’s greatest prime ministers have served successfully in wars with other Great Powers: William Pitt the Elder (in the Seven Years’ War), William Pitt the...

Margaret Thatcher was “barbaric” and “a terror.” She “hated the arts … hated the English poor [and] hated Greenpeace and environmental protectionists.” That’s the pronouncement of singer Morrisey, who has also come up with such astute political assessments as “If more men were homosexual, there would be no wars, because homosexual men would never kill other men, whereas heterosexual men love killing other men.” That’s certainly debatable. Morrisey is hardly alone in hating someone he brands a hater. A Labour candidate expressed disappointment Thatcher hadn’t been killed in a 1984 hotel bombing. And leftist politician George Galloway, who bears the...

Among all the media coverage of Margaret Thatcher's recent death, what has impressed me most are the scenes of communists, trade unionists, "occupyers", miners and assorted leftists "celebrating" collectively in the street (like in the video that can be seen clicking on the link just below the post title) or privately at home with a bottle of sparkling wine or a cigar. Where did you see analogous scenes? Among Muslims, of course, after 9/11 or some genocidal attack on Israel or other similar niceties. You never see Christians celebrating the death of anyone, or real conservatives doing that. All these...